The Pivot Fund will map the news landscape of the Great Lakes states with support from the Joyce and McKnight Foundations, both founding members of the Press Forward local news initiative. The project, which will begin in Minnesota, marks a major expansion of the Pivot Fund’s role in identifying local news outlets that have earned the trust of communities of color.
Since 2022, The Pivot Fund has conducted two news landscape analyses in Georgia. In the course of both analyses, Pivot identified and invested in seven news organizations that had never previously appeared on philanthropy’s radar screens. Now, Pivot will take its audience- and community-centered methodology to the Midwest.
McKnight and Joyce are founding members of Press Forward, the national initiative that has pledged to invest $500 million in five years to reinvigorate communities by supporting local news. In Minnesota, McKnight will use the analysis to inform its Press Forward Local strategy, said Tim Murphy, program officer at McKnight.
“This is a validation of the model we pioneered in Georgia to identify emerging news ecosystems,” said Pivot Fund CEO Tracie Powell, a former Shorenstein Center Research Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and graduate of Georgetown University Law Center. “The future of local news looks very different from its past.”
The Pivot Fund’s Georgia research showed that rural communities and communities of color largely mistrusted legacy news outlets, which for years ignored them or covered them only in connection with crime. At the same time, it found promise in hyperlocal outlets trusted by their audiences, led by enterprising publishers, and filling information gaps, especially in rural areas. Investing in those organizations provided outsized results, Pivot found.
Most of these sites didn’t look like traditional news organizations because they publish primarily on social media, particularly Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Yet that reflects a fundamental shift in news consumption by young people and communities of color. The Pivot Fund starts by asking communities what sources they trust for news and information, no matter the platform, and then verifies that they adhere to journalistic ethics and standards.
“Essentially, we’re trying to understand the long-term effects of bias in news coverage. What a century of bias has done to audiences that were once small but now are large,” said Jean Marie Brown, The Pivot Fund’s head of research. Brown is an associate professor of professional practice in the journalism department at Texas Christian University and a former reporter, editor, and newspaper executive.
“We need to better understand how people consume news, and the Pivot Fund has a unique lens to help with that,” said Hugh Dellios, who manages the Journalism program at the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. “By asking communities of color who they trust for their news and information, they can surface important players that we might miss because they don’t always look like traditional news publications.”
“We see this as an important effort that will help us understand and connect news and information to audiences in more powerful ways,” said McKnight Foundation’s Murphy. “In addition to informing our work in media, it will also help us more effectively center communities in Minnesota and across the Midwest, particularly communities of color, in our climate and equity approaches.”
About the Pivot Fund:
The Pivot Fund is a venture philanthropy organization dedicated to investing in independent, community news and prioritizing outlets led by and serving BIPOCTM communities. Through on-the-ground research, it identifies news outlets that have earned the trust of communities of color, and through funding and customized services, it helps them grow and transform their business models for lasting impact. Learn more at thepivotfund.org.
About the Joyce Foundation:
The Joyce Foundation is a private, nonpartisan philanthropy that invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region. It supports policy research, development, and advocacy in Culture, Democracy, Education & Economic Mobility, the Environment, Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform, and Journalism. Learn more at joycefdn.org.
About the McKnight Foundation:
The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts and culture in Minnesota, neuroscience, and global food systems. Learn more at mcknight.org.
About Press Forward:
Press Forward is a national movement to strengthen our democracy by revitalizing local news and information. A coalition of funders is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms, close longstanding gaps in journalism coverage, advance public policy that expands access to local news, and to scale the infrastructure the sector needs to thrive. For more, visit pressforward.news.
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